Review: THE ORIGINALS: The Changing Face Of Brooklyn

Overview

The New Yorker magazine is a well-known destination for print cartoons, but now it seems the one-time influential magazine is looking to get into more animated cartoons. Enter, “The Originals” directed by Alfie Koetter and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Cristina Costantini, and produced by XTR and Muck Media.

The film is the first collaboration and first animated film for Koetter and Costantini, who are married. Koetter built miniature sets inspired by Union Street in Carroll Gardens in the couple’s home during the pandemic. In collaboration with Canadian animators, the shy kids, he animated hand-drawn figures on top of the live-action footage of the sets.

“The Originals” is narrated by the filmmakers’ former landlord Matty “Square” Ruggiero and his childhood gang, the Union Street Boys. The five friends tell their story of what it was like to grow up in an Italian American neighborhood in South Brooklyn, where money was tight but friendships were tighter.

Stream the short now on The New Yorker. 

Our Take

Not unlike what you can already get with most Martin Scorcese films, though I like the idea for this being a series of shorts that highlight old neighborhoods. I’m definitely on the side of Matty in thinking that yuppies ruin nice things, so hopefully this short can help bring some of that to light. The animation aesthetic is rustic and dirty, very indicative of throwback Brooklyn, I just wish we could’ve dove a little deeper into Matty’s entry into, what sounds to be, the mafioso. Those stories aren’t going to be around forever, this one was a good one.